Electric Football, Invented In 1948, Still Alive And Buzzing

Kelvin Lomax (from left), Chris Bopst and Dru Sparks study the electric football field before a play. Their pastime of choice is on display at a museum in Richmond, Va.

Chris Benderev
/ NPR

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Originally published on October 11, 2013 10:52 pm

Professional football is America's real pastime.

The 2013 Super Bowl was the third-most-watched piece of television in recorded history. The first- and second-most-watched? The previous two Super Bowls.

And buried deep down inside that avalanche of fandom are the people who still play a board game invented in 1948 called electric football.

Their hard work is now on exhibit at the ADA art gallery in Richmond, Va. There are rows upon rows of miniaturized, plastic versions of the 49ers, Patriots and Eagles — each in their prime years, of course.

You'll find the details you could easily ignore even at human scale. The players are all about 2 inches tall, but they wear jerseys with corporate sponsor logos and helmets with microscopic chin straps that require tweezers and a lot of patience to apply.

Functional And Active Art

When you play electric football, you are a "coach." And as a coach, you send those bite-size players into battle on a metal football field often the size of a lunch table.

Today at ADA, the main coaches are Kelvin Lomax of Washington, D.C., and Dru Sparks of Richmond. They employ real football strategy, shifting players around by hand in carefully planned formations. These are plays they have practiced before.

When everyone is finally set at the line of scrimmage, Sparks flips a switch, which sends electricity into the metal board. The board starts to vibrate, sending both teams scuttling into motion.

"Look at that boy go! Look at that!" Sparks says.

Sparks cheers his tiny, inanimate running back as it rumbles through the defense for a crucial first down. Sparks, 43, played this game as a teenager.

"I practiced for an hour or two every day. I had two-a-days: offense in the morning, defense in the evening, especially in the summertime," he says. "I was the best in the neighborhood then. I was pretty good."

There was one big problem with the old days, though: Those little players were completely unreliable.

Then fans learned how to tweak the metal prongs on the bottom of each player.

Today, your QB will consistently drop back to pass, with a springy little arm throwing a putty football at your receiver. And the receiver — with his metal prongs tweaked appropriately — can run his route and be waiting downfield.

Football Of The Future

Electric football is in its offseason right now. Games start up later this fall, where there will be a real championship ring on the line. And winning that ring is no easy business.

"It's a lot of Saturdays sitting in rooms like this," Sparks says, laughing. "It's beautiful outside. I've got a family, you know? I'm in here playing with plastic men with four other dudes. That's what I'm doing."

The future of electric football is not clear. In 2007, the NFL dropped its licensing for the game, which meant no more NFL players or team logos. Everyone here agrees, that was a pretty rough year.

But these guys can manage. They've seen worse.

"Video games killed electric football," says one of the fans here, Mark Francis. Francis once researched the shoe deals of every player on his 1980s 49ers teams just to make sure no one was wearing Nikes when he should be wearing Reeboks.

"Electric football was hot in the '60s and when I played in the '70s. And in the '80s it died," Francis says.

The men in this room didn't give up using their boyhood imaginations decades ago when Madden video games came along and made it a lot easier to re-create the NFL experience.